weirdcat

Both good points, thanks. I've done some temporary tweaks to encourage visitors to scroll down for the preview, but after all I believe now it needs a complete rewrite to make it much cleaner -- I was going for "see all you need to see right on the homepage", but obviously it's not a right approach.

Lesson taken: Clicking is easier than scrolling and less really is more.

Yeah, you might have a point here. What I was going for was let a visitor play with the controls and preview the page without having to sign up, so I actually had a gradual signup in mind. :)

I'll think about reducing the clutter. Thanks a lot!

Clickable: http://soonhere.com

On a related note: how many unused, parked domains do you own?

Ha, I was thinking of creating something pretty similar as my next project. Or the next after that.

Thanks, you saved me a bunch of work! :)

By the way, gotta love the "Exclude sci-fi" checkbox.

I wouldn't cross the hackers out. People who hang out here are usually aware of all the technical/organizational challenges of building a scalable website with great UX, but lots of us could use some one on one guidance from someone experienced every now and then.

Ah, a good question to ask your non-technical clients then: what community sites like HN do they peruse?

Anyway, I know that if I'd seen a "karma" number over 1k, I'd be impressed even if I had no idea what it meant.

Simple and clean, both the offer and the site; I like it.

You might want to think about some kind of satisfaction guarantee. I for once might have a problem shelling out $400 for a 2h talk with a guy I never worked with without one. I'd actually make it a "money back plus a beer on me" guarantee.

If you had a stackoverflow account I'd definitely link to it; too bad it's not possible with Forrst.

I'd also publish your HN karma. Seriously. A big, automagically updating number, showing that you really are about community, sharing, brainstorming and all that jazz. :)

Let us know when you decide on something. :)

Have you tried http://wordoid.com?

3: A great illustration for this is the infamous Stanford prison experiment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment

6: You don't just start behaving in any way for no reason -- you do it because something happened. There's always a push, initiating your actions.

A great example of using it for your benefit is described in The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, where she says that having daily rituals helps in shaping new habits. In her example every morning she goes outside and hails a taxi; then she goes to the gym where she exercises for an hour. The point is she's not going to the gym every morning (that's hard, I tried it); instead she's just hailing a taxi (sounds much easier, doesn't it?). This puts her in motion. Waking up is a trigger to have a shower and dress, this leads to putting your shoes on and getting outside; once you're outside you just call the taxi, and once you're in the taxi there's no going back. You've tricked yourself into going to the gym. Again!

Great thing! I can already see the infomercials for this:

"I wear prescription glasses. Now I can watch 3D movies without piling on glasses and looking like a freak!"

"Now I can watch 3D while diving!"

"My kids just love it, and I love it too! No handles to break off, no glass to scratch... We used to go through at least four pairs of glasses a year in my family; Winkeroo is going to last a lifetime!"

It's like a highly condensed version of Switch (http://heathbrothers.com/switch/, highly recommended)

clickable: http://somelabs.com/HN-Tweaker.html

First impression:

To be honest, the site itself looks a bit amateurish -- weird or no padding in the text boxes, cut off tags that don't fit into the .tags div, usernames sticking out of the boxes (at least in FF on a mac), eg. http://songfountain.com/discussion/749

The Site Feed arrow is below the fold on the home page, so my first thought was I have to register to even browse the site -- you might want to promote the feed more prominently to engage visitors before you make them join the site.

Your tagline ("Song Fountain is the most effective way to discover new music!") sounds too much like a marketing claim, especially since the site doesn't look to be a major player and it's hard to believe it's more "effective" than last.fm or Pandora.

In the video you're describing the functionality of the site like you would in a technical manual. You might want to try to talk from a user's perspective ("How do I achieve this and that with Song Fountain?").

So there, that's my first impression. What are your plans about the site? Is it a side project (for fun, not money) or do you want to make it big with it?

Have you seen Dalton Caldwell's talk from Startup School 2010?

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pshTi9dk7Bw

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TphryAOyY40

In short: we all think creating a music startup is a fantastic idea, but it really isn't. :)

I usually start with some rough pencil drawings and a lot of thinking about the flow of the site, then hack out a prototype. Then I sit in front of it and stare, tweaking a thing at a time, until I'm happy with the result. Then I leave it there for a few hours or a day and stare some more. Whenever I have an idea that would substantially change the look, I usually sketch it again before implementing it.

The pencil and paper thing in my case works as a way to organize my thoughts and define what I'm actually going to do, rather than a formal design process. Usually I have an A4 sheet (or rather several) scribbled with ideas and sketches regarding a single project.